Book 2: Chapters 14-16 Summary

Bonham loses track of everything except tapping and again loses the distinction between waking and sleeping. He speculates about nothing, listens for nothing, cares nothing about past or future; he simply lies and taps out his message endlessly to people who do not understand. The day nurse tries to calm her suddenly irritable patient until he realizes she is too stupid to understand he is trying to communicate. She gives him hot baths, shifts his position, adjusts his pillow (to make tapping harder), and massages him. He feels a gathering love in her fingers, and when they move down his body and take up a steady rhythm, he can do nothing but yield to the pleasure.

Bonham recalls his sex life. Ruby, his first, is a big, fat, Italian sixth or eighth grader, younger than he, from the other...